Saturday, March 19, 2005

Saturday Quotes: Ludwig Wittgenstein + 3.19.2003

"Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of the imagination."

"For heaven's sake, don't be afraid of talking nonsense. But you must pay attention to your nonsense."

"The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity. (One is unable to notice something - because it is always before one's eyes.) The real foundations of his enquiry do not strike a man at all. Unless that fact has at some time struck him. - And this means: we fail to be struck by what, once seen, is most striking and most powerful.""If people did not sometimes do silly things, nothing intelligent would ever get done."

--all quotes by Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951)

***March 19, 2003 / March 19, 2005Q: Was it worth it? (The costs so far--over 1,500 US and coalition soldiers killed; over 13,000 wounded; over 100,000 Iraqi civilians killed or wounded; hundreds of billions of dollars spent, many unaccounted for; Osama bin Laden still on the loose; a pro-Iranian Islamic government now in control of Iraq; the US's international standing now worse than before, our longstanding alliances severely damaged; and on and on.)

W. Definitely not, especially given the what we've learned about the original premises (the nonexistent WMDs, the phantom Hussein-Al Qaeda links, etc.).